“‘Yes, my love, to be sure,’ said Mrs. Jericho, for she was all but convinced that Solomon’s reason was gone or going. It was best to humour him. ‘And why, my love, do you wish for these things? Of course you shall have them, but why?’
“‘To turn them into money, madam,’ cried Jericho, rubbing his hands. ‘We have had enough of the tomfoolery of wealth—I now begin to hunger for the substance. I’ll do without fashion. I’ll have power, madam—power!’”
The conversation continued, and Mrs. Jericho became more and more convinced that her husband was mad.
“‘Oh that Dr. Stubbs would make a morning call!’ silently prayed the wife.”
The man of money, having determined to dismantle his house and send his wife and daughters adrift, retired with one servant, all the rest being discharged, into “one of his garrets, a den of a place,” where the scullion had slept. The servant was the pauper grandfather of one of his footmen, an old man of “congenial weakness with Jericho. Indeed, there looked between them a strange similitude, twin brethren damned to the like sordidness, the like rapacity.”
Jericho had nicknamed the old man Plutus. Jericho and Plutus were in face and expression as like as two snakes.
Mrs. Jericho, assured of her husband’s madness, took counsel with her friends. Drs. Stubbs and Mizzlemist, Colonel Bones, Commissioner Thrush, and Candytuft met in conclave and listened to Mrs. Jericho’s account of her husband’s ravings; but she failed to convince the doctors that what a jury would consider insanity, was apparent in anything that the man of money had said or done. As Dr. Mizzlemist delivered this opinion, a crash was heard in an adjoining room—another, and another, and then a loud triumphant laugh from the throat of Jericho.
Wife and daughters, with jury of friends, started to their feet. Candytuft, ere he was aware—for had he reflected “a moment, he would as soon have unbarred a lion’s cage—opened the doors. And there stood Jericho, laden with spoil.”
Though Mr. Jericho was voted sane by the doctors, his conduct displayed a brutality for which madness would be the only excuse. The Jews were coming, everything was to be sold.
“‘Why stay you here?’ cried the man of money to his wife. ‘Why will you not be warned? In a few hours there will not be a bed for your fine costly bones to lie upon. Now will you depart?’”